Flexible broadcast authentication in resource-constrained systems: providing a tradeoff between communication and computational overheads

Abstract

A method for authenticating a message that is transmitted wirelessly. The method includes providing a set of private key values that define a private key and performing a key pair generation process that provides a key pair including the private key and a public key, where performing the key pair generation process includes applying one or more hash functions to the private key values, where a succeeding hash function provides a hash of a previous hash function. The scheme uses a signature generation process that generates a message digest by applying a hash function on the message to be signed and then separates the message digest into two parts including signing bits and selection bits and using the private key to sign the message. A receiver verifies the authenticity of the received message using the public key and a signature verification algorithm.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]1. Field of the Invention[0002]This invention relates to a one-time signature authentication scheme for wireless communications and, more particularly, to a flexible authentication scheme for authenticating messages sent wirelessly between vehicles that is a combination of a Winternitz one-time signature scheme and a hash to obtain random subset one-time signature scheme that provides a trade-off between communication and computational overhead.[0003]2. Discussion of the Related Art[0004]Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) wireless communications have been proposed for improved automobile safety. Under these applications, vehicles broadcast information over the wireless medium to one another. V2V applications aim to assist drivers in avoiding accidents by providing early warnings and advisories about potentially dangerous situations using the messages exchanged over the wireless medium. Vehicle-to-vehicle safety applications, such as blind spot warning (BSW) sy...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides a flexible authentication scheme that combines a Winternitz one-time signature scheme and a hash to obtain a random subset one-time signature scheme. This scheme includes a matrix of private key values and columns of private key values. The key pair generation process involves applying a plurality of hash functions to the private key values, resulting in a unique key pair for each row in the matrix. The signature generation algorithm uses a hash function on the message to be signed and selects which rows in the matrix are used to sign the message using the private key values from the selected row. The receiver verifies the authenticity of the received message using the public key and a signature verification algorithm. The technical effects of this invention include improved security and efficiency in authentication processes.

Problems solved by technology

Additional bandwidth is also consumed when signatures are appended to messages or packets.

There are a number of challenges in providing security for V2V communications for the aforementioned driver assistance applications.

The challenges include (i) resource constrained computing platforms, (ii) real-time latency requirements on the V2V messages, (iii) scarce communication bandwidth, and (iv) possibly rapid changes in the network topology.

However, there is no existing scheme that achieves all of the desired properties.

However, they are computationally quite intensive.

One-time signature (OTS) schemes are a computationally efficient alternative, albeit at the expense of increased communication overhead.

However, it is extremely computational intensive.

It may be used to sign multiple messages, but the security degrades rapidly.

However, its bandwidth overhead is quite overwhelming, its signature size is moderate, but its public key size is extremely large, i.e., six-seven orders of magnitude higher than ECDSA.

Further, its computational overhead is still one-two orders of magnitude smaller than that of ECDSA.

One-way hash functions are functions that are easy to compute, but computationally infeasible to invert.

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